31 March 2016

A Poet’s Life (詩人の生涯/ Shijin no Shōgai, 1974) is the only
non-puppet animation of Kihachirō
Kawamoto to win the Noburo
Ofuji Award. Apart from his Self Portrait (1988), Kawamoto’s
adaptation of modern tales tended to be done using cut-outs or drawn animation
styles such as Farce Anthropo-cynique
(1970) based on the short story by experimental modernist Riichi Yokomitsu (横光利一,
1898-1947) or Kawamoto’s original screenplay Travel (旅 / Tabi, 1973). In
interviews, Kawamoto usually explained that he was a firm believer in finding
the right animation materials for telling the story.

This
animated short is an adaptation of a story of the same name by the great modernist
writer Kōbō Abe (安部公房, 1924-1993), who is known for his surreal stories that
explore the modern angst of individuals in society. Unlike the colourful world of Kawamoto’s
puppet films, A Poet’s Life is drawn
in morose shades of grey and brown. The
flatness of the cut-out aesthetic mirrors the one-dimensionality of the dreary
life of the factory workers in this modern tale of inequality. The male main protagonist loses his job when
he dares to complain to his boss about the terrible conditions that he and his
fellow factory must endure.

The man lies
passed out on the floor of his home while his aged mother works diligently away
on her squeaky spinning wheel. The
dialogue is related through the use of title cards, and we learn that the old
woman feels as worn out and limp as a thread of cotton. The cotton flies from her hands and as she
reaches for it, she finds herself being terrifyingly turned into thread as
well.

The son
awakes to find his mother has disappeared.
All that remains of her is the clothes that were on her back, but he is
too exhausted to do anything about it. A
neighbour arrives and takes the newly spun yarn and knits it into a
sweater. But no one will buy the
sweater, not only because they are too poor but also because it cries out as if
in agony. The young man, who continues his
protest against the factory, has a feeling that the sweater should not be
sold. Eventually, the sweater ends up in
a pawnshop.

High up on
the hill overlooking the town, the factory owner lives with his family. The wealthy man polishes his rifle while his
wife wears a fur coat indoors. Winter
comes in the form of a beautiful sequence of falling snowflakes “made of
crystallized dreams, spirits, and desires.”
The snow keeps falling and the temperatures drop steeply. The families with foreign made sweaters
manage to survive at first, the storybook-like title cards tells us, but the
shelves of shops become empty. As the
situation becomes critical, the wealthy man order another 5000 foreign sweaters
in “a new pattern ideological tiger stripes in black and white. . . or 50 atom
bombs instead?”

The crisis
is averted when the young man puts on the sweater knitted by his mother – now
red with her blood. He looks and the
snow and comes to the realization that he is a poet: “Look! Aren’t these
beautiful snowflakes the forgotten words of the poor? . . . their dreams, spirits, desires. . . ” As
he writes down these words, the snow melts, and the sun comes out. Owner-less storerooms are opened and all the
people get sweaters.

Visually,
the film does an excellent job of representing the settings and characters of
Abe’s story. Compared to Kawamoto’s
later puppet animation, however, this animation is less expressive with too much
reliance on the text than on the visuals.
Although the text is very poetically written, I think the film would
have been a lot stronger if it had relied on the animation to tell the
story. The red sweater is a particularly
compelling visual motif because it is the only object that is brightly coloured
in an otherwise monotone film. Two
decades later, Steven Spielberg would use this same technique in his Oscar-winning
film Schindler’s List (1993) with the
memorable image of a girl in the red coat.

In recent
years, thanks to digital computer editing technology, there has been a marked
increase in the use of split-screens, not only in music videos but in feature
films.Films like Mike Figgis’s Timecode
(2000) or Bruce McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments (2007) use
split-screens to show simultaneous action in different spaces or the same scene
from different points-of-view.

In Sato no Chihiro (さとうのちひろ,
2014), her graduate work for her degree at Tokyo Polytechnic University of
Arts, the up-and-coming young animator Chihiro
Sato (さとうちひろ, b. 1991) uses the idea of the split-screen, but
instead of rendering it through computer technology, she draws each of the
individual frames by hand. This animated short was made using pencil and
pencil crayon on paper.

The film
consists of 7 vignettes, which each use different colour schemes and varying
sized “frames” or mini-scenes within a scene.
The title is a play on the name of the director and suggests an
autobiographical element to the subject matter.

The film was
originally made as Sato’s 2013 graduating work for Tama Art University’s
animation program. The version that I
saw at Oberhausen 2015 had cleaned up the animation a great deal and had edited
out 2 of Sato’s original 9 vignettes: “I Can’t Sleep / 眠れない / Nemurenai” and “A Desire Towards Red / 赤への欲求 / Aka e no Yokkyu.” The vignette titles
were in Japanese only and the translations to English are my own.

Story 1

Underarm
Hair Party / わきげのうたげ / Wakige no
Utage

The
predominant colours of the opening vignette are red, black, and yellow. The screen is divided into

6 frames (3
top / 3 bottom), which appear to be drawn freehand in similar but not exactly measured
sizes. The scene depicts a girl with
recently regrown armpit hair. One of the
frames features a close-up of the arm pit hair and we see that each hair are
small figures sitting in a row with long hairs growing out of their heads. When a figures is plucked out of the armpit
hair they are then placed into gyōza (Chinese
pot-stickers) wrappers and folded, then placed on a tray. An amusing, but surreal vignette.

Story 2

A Memory of
10 Yen Coins / 10円玉の記憶/ 10 Yen-dama no Kioku

This
vignette is black pencil on white and opens with the funeral picture of a
middle aged woman, which the vignette suggests is the girl’s mother. There are again 6 frames. A ten yen coin falling to the ground prompts
surreal images of ten yen coins floating in the air, followed by 10 yen coins
falling to the ground, arms of people in black reaching forwards, hands
collecting coins. A fat middle aged
woman grabs the girl’s leg. The girl moves her foot, woman takes 10 yen from
under it.

There is a
tradition in Japan of giving a grieving family money, but for me this sequence
conjured up memories of how grasping people can be when a family member
dies. Whether bickering over an
inheritance or property, sometimes the grieving family feels like everyone
wants something from them.

Story 3

Cooking
again Today / 今日も料理 / Kyō mo Ryōri

This
vignette is predominantly green with black outline. Multiple frames (8) of
varying sizes show food preparation: peas out of pod, cracking egg, toaster, and
so on. There are faces on the food like
in an NHK children’s show, except the vignette features sound effects without any
music.

Story 4

From the
Telephone / 電話から / Denwa kara

This vignette
opens with a girl in a pink dress curtseying. The frames within the frame are
drawn in a mauve pencil. A man in green has an old fashioned black telephone
with the curling cord. When it rings, he
picks it up immediately, however, instead of speech, a small hand pokes through
one of the holes on the part of the phone where one speaks. The arm falls out and lands limply on the
floor.

A finger
through curl of phone cord in a rather suggestive fashion, and many more arms
come out of the phone.

A red puddle. A leg struggles to get out of phone as well
and is helped by hands. Two legs come
out, when they land, they transform into the girl in the pink dress. A fish (possibly a sardine?) comes out of
phone, lands, and slices in two. The girl picks up the top half and takes it
away. The phone transforms into face and
the girl feeds it raw fish. The man
picks up the picks up bottom half of the fish and eats it. The sound effects more like crunching of a
carrot than of a sardine.

Story 5

Octopus and
Doctor / 蛸と医者 / Tako
to Isha

Six frames
drawn in orange pencil. A labyrinthine
setting in which surreal imagery suggests a sensual relationship between a doctor
and an octopus.

Story 6

Eat the
Stars / ほしたべよ/ Hoshi Tabeyo

A boy in
blue trousers and green t-shirt frame top left looks up to sky with a handheld
telescope. At the top there is one long rectangular frame titled on its side (!)
and 4 small frames are along the bottom.

The night
sky is dark blue and the frames are a greeny-yellow frame colour (same muddy
yellow as the star colour). There is the sound of a ringing bell. The boy uses what looks like a paint roller
to capture one of the stars and eats it like it’s a cookie. The other star rings like a bell. The boy
tries to capture it as well but this time he cannot reach it.

Story 7

The Tide
Comes In / 海が来る/ Umi ga Kitaru

A girl sits
on ground bare legs tucked up. In this
scene the pencil frame fills almost the entire frame available. There is a sand dune behind the girl and water
laps up until it reaches the girl’s bare legs.

This
animation is drawn in a very innovative style.
Although the meaning of each vignette is not always clear to me, they
unfold like a kind of surrealist visual poetry.
I am very excited about the
future prospects of this young animator.

Sato no Chihiro (さとうのちひろ,
2014) had its international festival premiere at Oberhausen 2015 and won the top prize at
the ASK? Film Festival 2014 (ASK? 映像祭２０１４). The
film was produced by Amica Kubo for
her production company Super Milk Cow.